Milkman by Anna Burns

Read May 2019 (audio book). Published September 2018.

This story takes place in the 1970s, in an unnamed city rife with sectarian violence.

Middle Sister likes to keep her head down, walking while reading, as a way to live in the constrained and violent world she finds herself in. She is not keen to draw attention to herself in any way.

Unfortunately, Middle Sister finds herself the latest hot topic of the district's gossip mongers, after The Milkman (a much older, eminent para-military gunman) decides to target her as his new girlfriend.

Middle sister is already busy enough trying to deal with life as an eighteen year-old, and establish what her actual relationship is with her own Maybe Boyfriend car mechanic, while keeping him secret from her intrusive mother who is keen to know when she is going to settle down and get married.
She has no time for the gossips, or for the things they are saying about her and The Milkman, because the whole thing is ridiculous. Why should she have to give explanations to people who have nothing to do with her, especially since there is nothing going on between her and The Milkman? Silence is her chosen response, but this does not save her.

The trouble is, gossip has a way of sticking and in a community where it is best to remain in the background, being noticed can be very dangerous.

This is the book that won the Man Booker Prize in 2018, and it has been short-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 (among other eminent prize competitions recently).

I am always a bit wary of the Booker Prize winners, because they tend to split the crowd and elicit strong reactions of either love or hate, and I have not always liked the books which win - although I have to say the superb Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel both deserved their prizes. However, since this book is on the Women's Prize for Fiction radar this year, and I have been trying to work my way through some of the titles that were long-listed, this was always going to be on my tbr. I did buy the book, but actually listened to the audio book instead.

I have to say that I am very impressed with this book. The audio book is absolutely fantastic, read beautifully by the Northern Irish actress Brid Brennan.

Although unnamed, this book is obviously set in Belfast of the 1970s, when the sectarian violence was at its height. Middle Sister clearly lives on the Catholic side of the divide, which is controlled by the IRA. This was a dangerous and difficult period of Northern Irish history. Protestants vs Catholics, with the added restrictions of a British Military presence, meant that violence was a frequent occurrence and people would find themselves so used to death that is was considered an everyday thing, on both sides of the divide.

I have seen a few reviews referring to this book as dystopian and can only say to these people that they really need to read some history about the troubles in Northern Ireland. I am old enough to remember the news stories about the violence and bombings, and can assure you that the people in Northern Ireland were living like this. Thankfully, the Peace process gathered enough momentum that real change eventually came about, and the majority of the Northern Irish population today are not keen to go back to the old days of sectarian violence.

Interestingly, the characters themselves are also unnamed, but are described either by their local nick-names, or by their relationship to Middle Sister - such as, Third Brother-in-Law, The Wee Sisters, First Sister, Longest Friend and so on. I have seen from some reviews that people have found this confusing, but I could not disagree more. The story centres around Middle Sister so it makes perfect sense for the characters to be described in terms of their relationship to her, and their given roles.

Middle Sister is living under the control of the strict rules of the paramilitary overlords about where you can go and how you should behave. These rules are ingrained in the community and anyone acting in an unusual manner finds themselves being labelled as "Beyond the Pale".
There are some pretty interesting characters who have found themselves in this Beyond the Pale group, and again they are referred to not by the real names, but by the names given to them by the community - Nuclear Boy, Tablets Girl, The Issues Women, to name a few - these characters are not seen as real people, but only in terms of the behaviour that have caused them to be given their nicknames. They are not behaving in the prescribed manner and have drawn attention to themselves as a result. As I have said above, drawing attention to yourself is dangerous.
Middle Sister is horrified to find that she becomes tarred with the same brush because of her new found fame and the Walking While Reading thing!

Middle Sister's world shrinks ever smaller through the book, as the weight of the gossip causes her to withdraw into herself more and more, until she cannot even allow herself the luxury of feeling or displaying any emotion at all. It is important to remember, that even without all the violence and bearing in mind where Middle Sister is living, it is difficult enough to be a young person trying to work out you place in the world anyway - especially for a young girl in the 1970s. Girls were expected to act in the stereotypical female role, wherever they lived in Britain at this time. Girls were used to being treated in a certain way by men and it is understandable that Middle Sister had no idea she was being sexually predated upon by The Milkman - it would have been rude and unthinkable to call him out on it, in any case. Do not despair Middle Sister, things will get better.

The text is very rambling, with chapters starting out on one subject and then taking a long and winding passage in lots of different directions, before returning to the matter in hand. The spoken text just picks you up and carries you along with the flow, and the lyrical sound of the Northern Irish accent. It is wonderful, and I think this is a distinct advantage of listening to an audio book, rather than reading the text alone.

Yes, the subject matter is inevitably heavy, given the period of time and the situation that Middle Sister is living in, but this book is so full of dark humour that you almost do not notice.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough - although I am aware that some people will be unable to get on with it at all too!
I do not envy the Women's Prize judges their task of choosing a winner this year. Having now read three books from the short-list, which are all quite different, I cannot imagine this will be an easy thing. If you are inclined to read a bit of literary fiction, then check out Milkman and the other excellent books on the short-list too.

Find my post about the short-list here: https://brownflopsy.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-womens-prize-for-fiction-2019.html